Seed Treatment Growth Cools As Retailers Report Mixed 2025 Results
November 3, 2025 For many years now, the seed care marketplace has been a steady growth engine for ag retailers. In fact, looking back over the data compiled in the annual CropLife 100 survey of the nation’s top ag retailers, seed treatment revenues year-over-year since the start of the 2020s have grown between 1% and more than 5% consistently. This was certainly the case in 2024, when the survey data showed that slightly more than half of respondents — 52% — said that their seed treatment sales had increased vs. what they had been during the 2023 growing season. Another 41% of respondents said that their seed treatment sales in 2024 were flat compared with 2023. So, overall, 93% of CropLife 100 ag retailers last year had solid seed treatment revenue numbers.
According to market experts, this consistent performance for seed treatment shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with agriculture.
Kyle McClelland, Seed & Technical Agronomy Manager at BRANDT, Springfield, IL, agrees that soybeans popularity has helped drive seed treatment sales in recent years.
“Seed treatment is a foundation of a high yield strategy for soybeans,” Kyle McClelland, then Seed & Technical Agronomy Manager at BRANDT, Springfield, IL, told CropLife Media Group in a 2024 interview. “Yes, it has grown from fungicide to fungicide and insecticide to now [where] most of our soybeans get a fungicide, insecticide, and nematicide. But it unlocks the yield potential that our team can continue to manage with foliar nutrition and other high management strategies. None of that is possible without planting soybeans early, which treatment enables.”
Some Slowing Ahead
And going into the 2025 growing season, it looked as if the seed treatment segment would continue on its growth curve. In fact, according to data from the 2025 CropLife Buying Intentions Survey, 86% of ag retailers going into this year’s growing season anticipated seeing their seed treatment revenues increase or remain on par with their 2024 sales figures.
However, when CropLife® Magazine conducted its Mid-Year Survey of CropLife 100 ag retailers, there were signs this rosy outlook for seed treatment for 2025 wasn’t taking place.
According to respondents from that survey, only 12% of them saw an uptick in their seed treatment sales for the year. Instead, much of the sales activity for the 2025 growing season was in such segments as adjuvants and micronutrients.
And the preliminary numbers from the 2025 CropLife 100 survey bear this view out. According to the data, only 45% of this year’s top ag retailers recorded sales increases in seed treatments. Another 36% had flat sales, with the remaining 19% seeing sales declines between 1% and more than 5%.
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